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Square opens up its Connect API to let merchants create custom solutions with their data

Payment technology company Square is making it easier for merchants and third-party developers to create tools and apps around its platform. It has publicly opened up its Connect API and is an important move to help it aggressively grow its ecosystem.

With the new API, merchants are able to retrieve activity reports for their processed payments, refunds and deposits. Square says that what it will not provide is the ability to accept payments — it’s only for reporting purposes. It’s also limited to pulling data from a single account, so no market research capabilities are available.

Interested merchants can register their applications on Square’s website using their account login. Once connected to the company’s API, developers can use their own personal access token or OAuth 2.0 protocol, which will generate renewable access tokens every 30 days.